"I'm hoping they'll hold out till that next medium gets popular, and everyone gets to buy everything over again," he says.
Get is a very interesting word choice. I'm just waiting for the class action lawsuit over this in a few years. It could finally be the death knell of the major labels. There have been so many billions of dollars spent in the last two decades for optical disk media, virtually everyone will be pissed when it dies.
Personally, I'm hoping that U.S. copyright will someday be reverted to its original sub-two-decade term, concordance with European laws be damned.
Yes, the Marathon series had a great story, but it was not what one would consider interactive. There was no verbal contact with anyone save the barks from the BOBs, and story branching was virtually nonexistant. The gameplay was great, and the story was great, but the connection between the two could have been better. I think that I may have even enjoyed Marathon better as a novel, which is a rare thing among games.
In Deus Ex, there was an enormous and greatly interwoven plot, but much of it is easily overlooked depending on how you play. Someone who approached the game as a action shooter could easily miss a lot of the subtlety, but fully exploring the world could lead to 80+ hour games, which some complained as being too long. Max Payne was linear and blunt, but pretty much everyone got the same thing out of it. Vice City had more freedom, but the story was really just more of a framing of the situation than something that really mattered. I disagree with the notions that freedom and story are mutually exclusive, but a game with great freedom has a much harder time of forcing a storyline on a player who doesn't really care.
Reported maximums (research-only included) in terms of Carnot efficiency: Stirling-cycle (phase-change): ~50% Peltier junction (solid state): ~10% Thermoacoustics (standing wave in gas): ~40%
Using a 'speaker fridge' now would be quite wasteful in terms of efficiency, although researchers believe that they can surpass the old CFC-type compressors soon.
The question that comes to my mind, though, is why the focus on the cooling itself. For a non-emissive object like ice cream, better energy conservation may be more easily achieved through better insulation. How about investing in cheaper silica aerogel, hippies? This stuff is virtually as light as air, essentially made of sand, almost as insulative as pure vacuum, and fairly strong. Having a cooling engine without any ozone-depleting chemicals is great, but it's kind of silly if your freezers still have interior styrofoam lining.
These cool chips still sound a little wishful and/or far off. It's illegal in the US to even use Tritium gas for glow in the dark products, and these things supposedly will require Cesium gas. Will be great if they work and are available for commercial use.
Peltier coolers are very inefficient in terms of heat shift. Right now, the best known materials aren't much more than ~10% of Carnot (thermodynamically limited) efficiency. This means that they produce a lot of heat to move just a little. This is why your Peltier block will get pretty chilly on one side but scalding hot on the other and why CPU Peltier rigs virtually require a water block to operate. Standard phase-change coolers are much better, and these new devices (haven't read the article yet) may be even better.
ATI sells a DVI -> component video adapter for their cards (may work with other brands, too, but I have no idea) that claims to support 480i/p, 720p, and 1080i. I doubt that most cards could output an interlaced signal natively for any resolution, but it would make sense that the ATI cards could output the 720p signal directly throught the DVI connector without the adapter in place.
I was given my grandfather's old Accutron (a trend, it seems), and have really enjoyed it. The only thing that ever gets to me is the constant humming. It's a nice novelty to show others, but can get obnoxious in a quiet enough place. With music playing and fans in my computer spinning, it's virtually unnoticeable, but I honestly can't sleep with it sitting on top of my dresser. It spends the night in my sock drawer.
Also, if you ever get one, pray that it never breaks. I had to have the coils replaced, and there is pretty much one guy on the continent who could fix it. Oh yeah, it scarfs down batteries pretty fast, too. All in all, though, a great watch to have.
While I do appreciate your EPA reference, the CH4==CO2 assumption isn't quite that simple. Per molecule, methane is quite a bit more effective at trapping radiant energy than carbon dioxide. Fortunately, I think that methane -eventually- reacts with free hydroxyl radicals to form carbon monoxide. (I have no idea how much of a greenhouse gas this is.) I haven't had college chemistry in a few years, so take this all with a grain of salt, though.
Sure, I know that the sulfide (ite/ate/whatever) imputities found in most petroleum products are bad mojo for the atmosphere, but isn't burning hydrocarbons just effectively re-releasing lost carbon back into the biosphere? Global warming issues, etc aside, isn't the industrial age simply reverting the environment back to an era before plants more or less depleted the atmosphere of C02? I just wanted to know if anyone else has looked at environmental issues in this way before.
Sure it may feel great to stick it to the major labels by apparently screwing them over twice, but it surely isn't N'Sync, Britney, or even the RIAA suits paying for reshelving costs. It's the owners of the franchise outlets that have to put up with it. Those poor bastards usually have enough expenses to deal with, including ungodly rent in malls, etc. And just remember about the price-fixing crap of a few years ago (of which I think the RIAA/whoever eventually were found guilty in some suit). Just let poor sales speak for themselves.
True, but they ain't G8. G8 = US, Canada, Russia, UK, France, Germany, Italy, + Japan. I think it's supposed to be the wealthiest 7 nations plus Russia.
What did you expect? This reeks of the whole MPAA/CSS mess, especially when the two technologies are so related. I am expecting a similar outcome, unless the AC3 decoder guys buckle early.
For such rules to actually work, wouldn't the goo have to be designed with inherent reasoning abilities? If the collective was designed 'dumb' (most likely scenario for practical purposes), how would the ingrained laws take hold when it formed intelligence/sentience?
What makes a person a 'buffoon' for opposing human cloning? Certainly, some benefits could be attained, like organ harvesting for transplants, but many people (myself included) find this and other possibilities morally reprehensible.
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"I'm hoping they'll hold out till that next medium gets popular, and everyone gets to buy everything over again," he says.
Get is a very interesting word choice. I'm just waiting for the class action lawsuit over this in a few years. It could finally be the death knell of the major labels. There have been so many billions of dollars spent in the last two decades for optical disk media, virtually everyone will be pissed when it dies.
Personally, I'm hoping that U.S. copyright will someday be reverted to its original sub-two-decade term, concordance with European laws be damned.
Yes, the Marathon series had a great story, but it was not what one would consider interactive. There was no verbal contact with anyone save the barks from the BOBs, and story branching was virtually nonexistant. The gameplay was great, and the story was great, but the connection between the two could have been better. I think that I may have even enjoyed Marathon better as a novel, which is a rare thing among games.
In Deus Ex, there was an enormous and greatly interwoven plot, but much of it is easily overlooked depending on how you play. Someone who approached the game as a action shooter could easily miss a lot of the subtlety, but fully exploring the world could lead to 80+ hour games, which some complained as being too long. Max Payne was linear and blunt, but pretty much everyone got the same thing out of it. Vice City had more freedom, but the story was really just more of a framing of the situation than something that really mattered. I disagree with the notions that freedom and story are mutually exclusive, but a game with great freedom has a much harder time of forcing a storyline on a player who doesn't really care.
Reported maximums (research-only included) in terms of Carnot efficiency:
Stirling-cycle (phase-change): ~50%
Peltier junction (solid state): ~10%
Thermoacoustics (standing wave in gas): ~40%
Using a 'speaker fridge' now would be quite wasteful in terms of efficiency, although researchers believe that they can surpass the old CFC-type compressors soon.
The question that comes to my mind, though, is why the focus on the cooling itself. For a non-emissive object like ice cream, better energy conservation may be more easily achieved through better insulation. How about investing in cheaper silica aerogel, hippies? This stuff is virtually as light as air, essentially made of sand, almost as insulative as pure vacuum, and fairly strong. Having a cooling engine without any ozone-depleting chemicals is great, but it's kind of silly if your freezers still have interior styrofoam lining.
These cool chips still sound a little wishful and/or far off. It's illegal in the US to even use Tritium gas for glow in the dark products, and these things supposedly will require Cesium gas. Will be great if they work and are available for commercial use.
Peltier coolers are very inefficient in terms of heat shift. Right now, the best known materials aren't much more than ~10% of Carnot (thermodynamically limited) efficiency. This means that they produce a lot of heat to move just a little. This is why your Peltier block will get pretty chilly on one side but scalding hot on the other and why CPU Peltier rigs virtually require a water block to operate. Standard phase-change coolers are much better, and these new devices (haven't read the article yet) may be even better.
ATI sells a DVI -> component video adapter for their cards (may work with other brands, too, but I have no idea) that claims to support 480i/p, 720p, and 1080i. I doubt that most cards could output an interlaced signal natively for any resolution, but it would make sense that the ATI cards could output the 720p signal directly throught the DVI connector without the adapter in place.
I was given my grandfather's old Accutron (a trend, it seems), and have really enjoyed it. The only thing that ever gets to me is the constant humming. It's a nice novelty to show others, but can get obnoxious in a quiet enough place. With music playing and fans in my computer spinning, it's virtually unnoticeable, but I honestly can't sleep with it sitting on top of my dresser. It spends the night in my sock drawer.
Also, if you ever get one, pray that it never breaks. I had to have the coils replaced, and there is pretty much one guy on the continent who could fix it. Oh yeah, it scarfs down batteries pretty fast, too. All in all, though, a great watch to have.
While I do appreciate your EPA reference, the CH4==CO2 assumption isn't quite that simple. Per molecule, methane is quite a bit more effective at trapping radiant energy than carbon dioxide. Fortunately, I think that methane -eventually- reacts with free hydroxyl radicals to form carbon monoxide. (I have no idea how much of a greenhouse gas this is.) I haven't had college chemistry in a few years, so take this all with a grain of salt, though.
Sure, I know that the sulfide (ite/ate/whatever) imputities found in most petroleum products are bad mojo for the atmosphere, but isn't burning hydrocarbons just effectively re-releasing lost carbon back into the biosphere? Global warming issues, etc aside, isn't the industrial age simply reverting the environment back to an era before plants more or less depleted the atmosphere of C02? I just wanted to know if anyone else has looked at environmental issues in this way before.
Sure it may feel great to stick it to the major labels by apparently screwing them over twice, but it surely isn't N'Sync, Britney, or even the RIAA suits paying for reshelving costs. It's the owners of the franchise outlets that have to put up with it. Those poor bastards usually have enough expenses to deal with, including ungodly rent in malls, etc. And just remember about the price-fixing crap of a few years ago (of which I think the RIAA/whoever eventually were found guilty in some suit). Just let poor sales speak for themselves.
True, but they ain't G8. G8 = US, Canada, Russia, UK, France, Germany, Italy, + Japan. I think it's supposed to be the wealthiest 7 nations plus Russia.
What did you expect? This reeks of the whole MPAA/CSS mess, especially when the two technologies are so related. I am expecting a similar outcome, unless the AC3 decoder guys buckle early.
For such rules to actually work, wouldn't the goo have to be designed with inherent reasoning abilities? If the collective was designed 'dumb' (most likely scenario for practical purposes), how would the ingrained laws take hold when it formed intelligence/sentience?
What makes a person a 'buffoon' for opposing human cloning? Certainly, some benefits could be attained, like organ harvesting for transplants, but many people (myself included) find this and other possibilities morally reprehensible.
Come on, everybody knows that Combat Strength is better. :) Well, at least if you can get your hands on a non-eutactic blade.